Posted
by
CowboyNealon Saturday October 27, 2007 @11:02AM
from the slippery-slopes dept.

mijio writes "It's not the first time that Italy discusses Internet censorship. The last year, after some guys appeared in a video punching and blaming a kid with Down syndrome, Minister of Education Fioroni brought in to trial two of Google Italy's managers and then proposed and strongly sustained his idea of censoring the Internet to protect the young. Now Ricardo Levi, the prime minister's right hand, is finally successful in promulgating his law on internet censorship. With the goal of "promoting and enriching the pluralism of information," the law rules that everyone involved in "editorial activity" must be subscribed to the "Registry of Operators of Communication" to be prosecutable in case of defamation, where "editorial product" is defined as "any product with purpose of information, education, divulgation, entertainment, aimed at publication, no matter the form it is realized in and the mean it is distributed with." When inquired about the effects of this rule for bloggers, Levi responded, "We have no interest in touching amatorial or personal sites, it would be not feasible". The Times speaks about this paradox as well."

Nonono, don't blame the country, blame the asshats who push for idiocy like this.

Try:

Fioroni, who only defend retards for the familial resemblance, molests dead sheep;
Ricardo Levi takes sloppy seconds while snorting lines of coke off the penises
of 8YO boys. And they both smell funny. And... Uhhh... I dunno, something about
watching too many American mafia movies if I could find the right phrasing to make
it insulting but not just a racist joke, and some sort of insult

Watch out. This is ordinary in Italian politics.The scheme is:1. Speak about a very restrictive law that is being written.2. Wait for the reaction of the media. If they criticize you, step back and say you were "misunderstood".3. Change the criticized aspects of the law, introduce a bit of freedom. This is how you wanted the law to be from the beginning. Everyone should understand that this is a reasonable compromise between what is needed and what is possible to do. Now the media won't care about it anymor

Don't be derogatory just because someone is of a certain nationality or race. Everywhere I have gone I have found wonderful people to share a drink with. (Italians seem to know more about relaxing then just about anyone so they get extra bonus points to boot...)

If you are going to bag on him do it because he just doesn't get the joke.

The answer was last modified 7 years ago. People have been complaining about this sort of thing for as long as I've been on the site. It's not going to change; they don't care. They are far more focussed on getting stories up quickly than on checking for factual correctness.

Constitution can change as well, and even if it is violated no one will notice or bother.

It won't be proposed in this form due to the huge debate it has raised.

I bet that the government will pass the law in another form: As a data protection law which will say that everyone who keeps a file with personal information will have to register with the government (or an authority - which is the same thing in my opinion).

Then if you create a blog and accept comments, and your blog software asks for the email address of the people posting the comments, your blog's database may

I bet that the government will pass the law in another form: As a data protection law which will say that everyone who keeps a file with personal information will have to register with the government (or an authority - which is the same thing in my opinion).

That won't happen easily. The privacy laws here are *very* strict, and often governments or other institutions have been slapped for violating them, publicly. To use personal data you have to state exactly why are you using them, and you can always hav

I have to say that I don't know the internal political landscape in Italy or the Italians's perception of politics. If Italians are aware of their constitution that's a good thing (in other countries people don't know what their constitution says). I have visited Italy but I didn't stay long enough to learn much about it (I loved it though so I will surely visit it again at first opportunity!).

"registering all web site operators" scheme was proposed even in turkey, then abandoned. italians are even behind turkey when it comes to internet, apparently. "protecting the young" my butt. the only thing the young need protection from, are rotten spirited politicians like those.

A register for on-line publication has been active in Italy for years, and it's not mandatory.
It's meant to enforce trust for those who wish to use it, and it's mandatory to become eligible for those public financial aid we have for press.

A German court recently forced one of the larger ISPs to block access to the Youporn site [youporn.com]. Originally they (the ISP) tried it by blocking access to the IP-Address but since Youporn is hosted by GoDaddy, that blocked their customers' access to thousands of other sites as well. Now they have tried it at the DNS level.

The background to this is that a German porn site had to implement stringent controls to make sure the underage did not manage to sample their wares. Youporn did not bother with this and so had an unfair advantage. I read that Youporn is something like the 14th most popular site in Germany.

Several other organisations apparently have similar plans to shut down access to some site or other.

Interesting to note that this was more about economic competition than "Save the Children!"

I've been living and working in Germany for about a month now and this economy doesn't really like "competition" or anything like that. Anyone selling you anything (car, TV, apartment) first asks you how much you are willing to spend; you have to pay all kinds of outrageous extra fees for really no service (it's not uncommon for the realtor/property manager who finds you a place to demand ~3000 euro for their 1 day of work); and businesses collude to keep prices up (nobody is "allowed" to sell for lower prices).

So it's not suprising to me that that this was an issue of halting "competition" rather than protecting young minds.

Government asking ISPs to block access to certain sites (any sites) should be made illegal worldwide. ISPs lose money and undergo additional expenses incurred by government censors: They cannot provide true unlimited access to the Internet and have to spend time and money in blocking sites. Government censors interfere with their business and if they make the life of ISP entrepreneurs very difficult then we will stop seeing more small new ISPs being founded because of the costs and risks involved and Int

It could happen if people provided a financial and political incentive for abolishing all censorship laws worldwide. If a huge number of citizens worldwide agreed not to buy anything from nations that have censorship laws (eg the communist China PRC), voted for pro-freespeech politicians, and asked international organisations such as the EU and UN to formally recognise any censorship as equal to slavery, then it could happen. The important thing would be to make it happen with democratic consensus and via

after some guys appeared in a video punching and blaming a kid with Down syndrome

then proposed and strongly sustained his idea of censoring the Internet to protect the young.

Anyone else see a glaring contradiction here? If it was censored no one would have ever seen the video, in turn the kid would have never had his story shown, and in turn no one would have ever cared about him getting punched. The problem with censoring "graphical" content is it promotes exactly what the supporters of the censoring tell you it's trying to avoid, apathy.

If it was censored no one would have ever seen the video, in turn the kid would have never had his story shown, and in turn no one would have ever cared about him getting punched. The problem with censoring "graphical" content is it promotes exactly what the supporters of the censoring tell you it's trying to avoid, apathy.

In the real world the bully lives for his chance to play before an audience. The Internet gives him a far bigger stage.

exactly. But societies operate on see no evil hear no evil. Same with child porn. While I dispise it, naturally, there is really no good reason to forbid someone from showing of their criminal activities. Instead of going after the original crimes far to many law enforcement recourses are being diverted to fighting secondary consequences. One could say the same for anti drug laws which where originally designed to curb crimes related to drug aquisition. Now there is a whole new class of criminals, prisons a

You know Valentino Rossi has a "WLF" on the necklace of his suit: it goes for "Viva la Figa!"
No, I won't translate the last word for you, and you should not google for it without a good pop up stopper:P

Our government bans nothing based on nudity or sex. An adult can freely go and buy all kinds of porn here. Try buying Manhunt 2 in the UK. It's banned by a governmental body and cannot be legally sold there.

Nonsense. If you don't want teens exploited, have laws that forbid *that*. Then, when a site posts porn showing girls who didn't consent to this, use that law instead. No need to have carte blanche laws to rubber stamp whatever type of censorship you would like.I notice your.il website. So let me ask you a question directly. I presume it is forbidden in Israel, just like it is in Germany and a couple other European countries, to deny holocaust. Now the question: Is it also forbidden to say that water isn't

Wow. A (-1) flamebait mod. I'm not sure if this is actually a first for me, but it definitely comes as a surprise. A sad surprise, may I add. I would by far have preferred a proper argument.So I presume that you will agree that a huge amount of religious works, including the bible, should be banned, as they offend me by contradicting and thus denying a well-established historical fact, the fact of biological evolution. No? Then perhaps banning holocaust denial is also a bad idea.

I do not support censoring the internet, but you can look at this problem in a better prospective, such as thinking about the exploited teens that are shown in some site in a pornographic manners, that I support of being censored.Like in every other thing in our life where's the red line?

Well, there's an obvious line between images made only with consenting adults, and images that involve non-consenting participants.

For the most part, that's not even a "line", more like a big gaping division - in the same w

Surely if censorship of the internet is to "Protect Children" then why not simply ban children from using the internet?
This proposal would be like seeing children in a pub, then making everyone drink water, so the kids dont get drunk.
what i never understood is, why try to keep children "innocent" only to viscously corrupt them with the hideous reality of their pathetic lives at 18?

No, we aren't afraid. A lot of italian people think that this kind of law is sh*t, but our politicians are almost old and they're total n00bs. 90% of them don't know what a blog is.However this proposal has been retired by the minister, so no censorship will be applied at all.Greetings from Italy!

"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master"

I used to use this as my sig, I think I'll start doing it again. FYI, its a paraphrase of the last part of a statement in by Pravin Lal in Sid Meyer's Alpha Centuari.

Heres the full text:"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last loose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
-- Commissioner Pravin Lal, "Librarian's Preface"

Italy wants to "censor" the Internet, do they? I guess they've forgotten that the United States already "controls" the Internet, and since we're the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free there's no way we're gonna let the do it, so there.